Contract consolidation considered

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Jim Flyzik, acting assistant secretary for management and chief information officer at the Treasury Department, said he's considering consolidating contracts and bundling others in a move to reduce costs and increase competition.

Flyzik told attendees at a Federal Sources Inc. breakfast meeting July 31 that the idea is one of many on the drawing boards to help use technology more efficiently and to save money along the way. And he said it is a project that the new CXO council at Treasury would discuss when it meets in August.

"We've got new stuff, new ideas," he said. "I think you are going to see a lot of changes."

Later, he told Federal Computer Week that he'd like to model the contract idea on the way the Naval Sea Systems Command (Navsea) manages more than 130 acquisition programs. Navsea is the Navy's central command for designing, engineering, integrating, building and procuring Navy ships, shipboard weapons and combat systems. It has a $20 billion yearly budget—nearly one-fifth of the entire Navy's budget.

In outlining plans for Treasury as the department's CIO and management executive, Flyzik said the Internal Revenue Service is developing three new portals—one for practitioners, one for the public and an internal one for employees.

He also said government is working on a one-stop portal for grants and trying to figure out how a person can file a change of address electronically just once with the U.S. Postal Service and have it changed on every official form.

A two-year campaign that prompted the Department of Homeland Security to issue its first-ever emergency directive to agencies to shore up cyber defenses appears in part to have been an attempt to spy on U.S. government internet traffic.